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/// SUMMARY
The Anime Awards is an eight-year-old global franchise that had never generated revenue. It functioned as a loss leader—valuable culturally, but commercially inert.
Externally, it looked like a B2C awards show. Internally, it serves a critical enterprise objective: a B2B licensing relationship system designed to keep Japanese studios licensing premium content to Sony rather than competitors.
Tasked with developing and executing a new growth strategy, I treated the Awards as a business unit and rebuilt it as a repeatable commercial system—integrating narrative, marketing, partnerships, SEO, martech, lifecycle, e-commerce, operations, and monetization into a single motion.
/// WHAT WAS "BROKEN"
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The Awards had scale and brand relevance, but lacked the systems required to convert attention into durable value:
No revenue model (permanently a loss leader)
Limited first-party data capture and fragmented tooling
Lifecycle treated as separate from brand moments (spike > drop-off)
Partnership surface area underdeveloped (no Western partners historically)
Enterprise relationship motion was real—but not formalized
The C-suite mandate when I arrived: increase votes and views.
I accepted that, but operated like an entrepreneur and set three additional “quiet OKRs”:
Unlock first-ever revenue, change perception of the event from loss-leader to profit engine;
Win durable demand capture (SEO dominance);
Stop the random acts of marketing; do more with less.
/// THE STRATEGIC FRAME
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The Anime Awards as a Dual-Sided Commercial System:
B2B (Enterprise) objective:
Strengthen licensing relationships and studio trust—making Sony the preferred partner over competitors.
B2C (Consumer) objective:
Drive funnel engagement for Crunchyroll: data capture > lifecycle engagement > conversion > retention.
The core systems principle:
Marketing, lifecycle, partnerships, and operations are not separate disciplines here. They are one unified commercial system—and they must be engineered together.
/// WHAT I BUILT
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Top-of-Funnel Narrative Engine (Culture as Commercial Infrastructure)
I created a durable creative spine “Fight for What You Love” to unify the motion across Marketing, communications, partner, and product surfaces.
This did two things at once:
For fans: made voting feel like advocacy (high intent, high participation)
For studios: elevated the Awards into a meaningful annual ritual that reinforced pride and legitimacy
Key moves:
Built the thematic narrative and standardized copy across paid + lifecycle variants;
Closed high-profile AAA talent + live music deals to expand reach and cultural relevance;
Instilled an agile culture of experimentation with creative test loops.
Enterprise Relationship & Deal-Flow Architecture (B2B disguised as B2C)
This was relationship infrastructure AND a brand moment.
I worked closely with licensing, approvals, and studio relations leadership to keep studios supported—and proud—across the nomination, announcement, and live event lifecycle.
System components:
Regular alignment with studio relations / licensing stakeholders to manage relationship risk
Recognition design (including special achievement awards) calibrated to reinforce partnership value and community contribution
Studio-facing nomination and promotion asset packages so studios could activate their own audiences
Ritualization: building a predictable, prestige-generating annual moment (analogous to what the Oscars does for Hollywood), to increase studio pride and willingness to continue licensing premium content to us
Result: the Awards became an annual B2B touchpoint that improved goodwill, reduced friction, and strengthened long-cycle partner alignment.
Lifecycle + MarTech Overhaul (Personalization at Scale)
The biggest unlock was turning a once-a-year event into a personalized lifecycle system.
This required rebuilding trust with technical partners and then rebuilding the underlying infrastructure:
What I changed:
Re-architected the martech stack and data pipelines to enable first-party, privacy-safe data capture
Eliminated and onboarded vendors, navigating Sony security and legal rigor
Implemented automated rETL to improve reliability and reduce operating costs
Designed multi-language lifecycle sequencing and segmentation logic
Coached teams on drip campaign design (first-ever for Crunchyroll), enabling execution at global scale
Outcome: lifecycle became a repeatable motion, not an ad hoc blast.
Partnerships + Paid + SEO as One GTM Motion (Durable Demand Capture)
Rather than treating channels separately, I engineered a unified motion:
SEO as compounding demand capture
Paid as efficient acceleration
Partnerships as credibility + distribution expansion
Key moves:
Secured first-ever Western partners in the Awards’ history, including TikTok, Amazon, Walmart, MLB (and others)
Optimized paid media to improve blended CAC
Achieved durable SEO lift and ownership of high-intent queries, turning discovery into a structural advantage